BQB here with a review of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”
I have to admit, 3.5 readers. When I saw the first ads last year, I thought this was going to be forgettable, an attempt by Sony to make some quick cash on an old copyright they nabbed pre-Avengers.
Instead, it turned out to be awesome. Just goes to show the power of word of mouth. As I kept hearing people say it’s good, I eventually became intrigued and had to check it out myself.
It took me a minute to get acclimated. The animation is different. Seems a little jerky at first until you realize the point is that it is supposed to be a comic book come to life.
The plot? Teenager Miles Morales is bitten by a radioactive spider and obtains those spider powers we fans have all come to know and love. He’s given little time for his own origin story as he is almost instantly swept up into a battle between Spider-Man and the Kingpin, who has recruited a plethora of villains – Green Goblin, Scorpion, Doc Ock, and so on, to create a machine that provides access to alternate dimensions.
Without giving too much away, Miles becomes the key to saving the day, but he’ll need help learning his new powers. Thankfully, he’ll get it from a multitude of Spider-People. You see, as it turns out, every dimension has one. Spider-Man-Noir (a 1930s detective), Spider-Ham (a Porky Pig version), Spider-Woman, Penni Parker aka Anime Spider-Girl, and a middle-aged, washed up, sweat pants clad version of Peter Parker all get together to help Miles cultivate his powers.
It’s fun. It’s captivating. It’s better than average. My one complaint is we don’t spend a lot of time with the alternate Spider-People. Middle-Aged Spider-Man and Spider-Woman are Miles’ main confidantes while the noir, anime, and Looney Tunes versions are relegated to punch lines which, I suppose is somewhat appropriate.
Lots of celebrity voices and overall, the Academy Award for Best Animated Film was well deserved.
Funny. I actually went out tonight. I usually stay in on Oscar night and watch the show but I went out and saw Green Book instead. To my surprise, it won. It wasn’t surprising, as it was a good movie. It’s just that I thought BlackKklansman had it locked up
So, that’s a first for me, seeing an Oscar movie in the theater the night it wins. Someone give me an award for good timing.
Anyway, BQB here with a review.
You know, 3.5, as it turns out, there’s more that unites us than what divides us. We’re all different. Different races, sexes, classes and yet we’re all just looking for one thing – dignity.
Dr. Don Shirley (Mashershala Ali) is an educated man with multiple doctorates, but in the 1960s, he is most famous for being a talented classical pianist. So great are his skills that he fills concert halls and moves everyone in attendance with his ivory tickling skills.
He prides himself on dignity and self-respect. He’s well read and doesn’t care for rudeness, bad manners, bad grammar and so on.
An odd couple road trip is set into motion when nightclub bouncer Tony Lip is recruited to be Doc’s driver and protector on a concert tour through the deep south.
Hard to say it out loud, but Tony hates black people. In an early scene, a pair of black repairman come to his house to work on an appliance. When his wife gives them lemonade, he throws the glasses into the trash can, not wanting to drink out of the same glass as a black man.
When his club shuts down, Tony’s out of money and options, so he takes the job driving the Doc and watching his back.
At first, the duo can’t stand each other. Tony is an uncouth bore, telling inappropriate jokes and constantly shoving fast food in his face. Tony isn’t a fan of the Doc either, thinking his client is a holier than thou book worm.
Together, they learn and grow. Doc teaches Tony some much needed gentlemanly skills – how to improve his speaking skills, how to write better, etc. Tony teaches Doc how to grease the wheels and get out of jams. In other words, Tony comes across as a dumb brute until his cop bribing skills and willingness to knock punks out comes in handy in the Jim Crow south.
Eventually, Tony drops his racist ways and he and the Doc become the best of friends.
I understand there’s some controversy brewing in that the movie isn’t all that woke in comparison to the other nominees. Today, we definitely hold people to a higher standard. You should never be racist and it doesn’t matter how much time has passed since a racist incident. If you did something racist, then you’re gone. Tony doesn’t fit that bill because he begins the film as a racist then by the end of the film he has an awakening that makes him a better man.
I don’t know. On one hand, I get the need for people to be not racist from the start. On the other hand, we should be encouraging people to be better and improve themselves so…I don’t know. Somehow those two standpoints need to be reconciled.
There are a few powerful scenes in the film. Spoiler Alert – the most moving is when Doc and Tony stop along the road to change a tire. The black workers in the field, one assumes descendants of slaves who worked in the field look on in amazement as it becomes clear to them that Doc is the boss in the back of the car and Tony is his employee.
It’s a good film that tugs at the heart strings. On top of racial clashes, all types of conflicts are discussed. Class struggles. Education struggles. At times, Tony and Doc class less about race and more about their different education and class levels. Ironically, Tony is less accomplished than Doc, yet Tony can walk into any establishment while Doc has to wait outside. Sad to think that this was once the way the country was.
Admittedly, Viggo basically plays a cartoon character version of a mob connected Italian, but to his credit, he does transform into an entirely different person. He’s lively and humorous, whereas Viggo is usually known for playing quiet, brooding characters.
I enjoy Ali’s performance as well. At times, I could feel the crushing loneliness Doc felt. He held multiple doctorates, was rich and talented, but the same rich people who would hire him to play would then turn around and tell him not to use their bathroom after the performance, and generally, had no interest in befriending him or treating him as an equal. Sadly, at the time, black people didn’t have much access to higher education at the time, so they don’t know what to make of this fancy man in his fancy suits with his fancy way of speaking. He is utterly alone and no one understands him.
Not sure it was the best film out of those nominated but still a lot of good messages just the same.
Melissa McCarthy isn’t ugly but she is chubby and unfortunately, the Oscars will never allow a person who isn’t skinny to win. It’s sad such discrimination against people of size.
How long must my people suffer before we are finally recognized by the Academy?
I rooted for Willem Dafoe to win Best Supporting Actor last year and for Best Actor this year. He’s lost two years in a row. The Oscars just won’t let an ugly man take home a little gold statue.
An outrage! Outrage, I say! On behalf of all Ugly-Americans, I am offended.
Who knew a movie about crap that happened hundreds of years ago could be so controversial?
BQB here with a review of “Mary Queen of Scots.”
I’m going to say it at the outset. For me, as one of a handful of fans of historical films left, this movie was a stinkburger with extra turd fries. The problem is, I think that might have been the point?
I’m loathe to cry SPOILER ALERT because you’ve had 500 years to learn the tale, and there have been a number of other shows and movies about it but the short story is Mary returns to Scotland after the death of her French husband and takes her place as Queen of Scots. This causes turmoil for Elizabeth, the infamous red haired Queen of England as two queens on one island is a recipe for disaster.
I’ll say a nice thing about this movie. I will admit it taught me a lot about this period that I never knew before. Namely, it takes the stance that the women, Mary and Elizabeth, were the calmest heads in the proverbial room, and it was their butthole male advisers refusing to take council from women that screwed everything up. More specifically, Elizabeth is Protestant and her Protestant advisers subvert her efforts to make peace with Mary. Elizabeth is like (she doesn’t say this but I’m paraphrasing), “Hey, I’m old and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else with a brain ready to take over when I croak so England might as well go to Mary’s offspring.”
But her male advisers are like, “No fuck that! We hate Catholics!” and in secret they’re like “This is bullshit we have to take orders from a broad!” Again, paraphrasing.
Meanwhile, Mary is like, “I’m a Catholic but if I take over England I won’t kill the Protestants! Everyone can worship as they choose!” but her male advisers are all like, “Fuck this! You have a vagina! My dick is superior! I must rule!”
And so, that’s the gist of the story. It claims Elizabeth and Mary wanted peace, but the hot headed males under their command wouldn’t listen to them. The injustice seems to be that if Liz and Mary had been male kings, male advisers wouldn’t have dared betray them but lost on the cutting room floor is that male kings probably would have had a few heads chopped off of people who looked at them funny just to keep conspiracies against the crown at bay.
So maybe the lesson is men have to keep their testosterone in check and obey the chain of command when a woman is in charge and women have to rough up a few muthafuckas to show everyone who’s boss.
Ultimately, that would have been a modern twist on an old tale. Men, keep your balls in check if you want to work for a female leader and women, grow a pair of hypothetical balls if you want to lead because there will be times that call for aggression.
But it doesn’t stop there. This is a very woke, very PC retelling of a classic tale, so much so that it looks like a bunch of SJWs got together and crafted it in a lab.
OK. What I’m about to say may sound racist but I’m going to make the argument why it is not racist.
Mary has an Asian lady-in-waiting an African adviser and a Puerto Rican secretary. There are also people of color throughout, as extras and in smaller roles. Thus, the diverse casting in period dramas debate is raised.
Is it the end of the world to provide to a movie about 1500s England with a diverse cast? No. Is it historically accurate? Also, no. And I guess this is where the film goes out of whack for me.
And I know, this is where you say, “Oh BQB, you are a racist douche face because you hate seeing a diverse cast in a movie.” No, that’s not it. I just think that whenever Hollywood makes any kind of history piece, they’re taking a gamble because audiences don’t flock to historical movies. On the other hand, Hollywood should be encouraged to keep making these flicks because they preserve and teach history for future generations.
Therein lies the problem. You might argue, “Oh it’s so horribly racist to look at a period piece and see no diversity in the all white cast!” but my counter would be that more and more, people turn to movies and TV as their main source of learning about history. As that trend continues, what if some nitwit, hundreds of years ago watches a movie like this and thinks, “Aww, look. Mary Queen of Scots had a black advisor, an Asian lady-in-waiting and a Puerto Rican secretary. 1500s Britain must have been a wonderful place for people of color!”
No, it wasn’t. There weren’t any there and of the few who may have been, they were no doubt treated poorly and definitely not appointed to high positions.
I hope I won’t botch my take-away from the article, but it seems like she is saying that theater companies today are very diverse and when actors are honing their acting chops, it is common for them to turn to the classics. Thus, you’ll have Shakesperean and old English era plays put on with diverse casts.
Fair enough. I just…I don’t know. To me, there just seems to be something off about it. The message, I thought anyway, was, “Hey. Here were two strong women who could have made peace and kept their island from imploding if all the male underlings would have just shut their holes and done as they were told.”
In other words, the island erupted in Protestant vs. Catholic warfare because it was an unwoke time where men couldn’t drop their egos long enough to take direction from a woman.
Good message, but to me, it’s lost in the diverse casting. You can’t simultaneously claim this was an unwoke time where a lack of wokeness led to war but also, look, it was so woke that there were people of color in very high, prominent positions.
Maybe I’m a caveman. I don’t know. Any other type of movie, I’m all for diverse casting. I actually don’t even care if there’s diverse casting in a historical fantasy. For example, Netflix has a show called The Frankenstein Chronicles about 1800s London where a pair of detectives, a black and white cop buddy duo, investigate a series of murders that seem to imitate the murders in Mary Shelley’s tale. Is it accurate that a black cop would have been treated with respect and seen as an equal in 1800s London? No. But then again, they didn’t have Frankensteins either. It’s all pure fantasy and there are nerds of all different colors who love fantasy so sure, why not have a diverse cast that appeals to all the different colors of the nerd rainbow?
Further, I think sometimes Hollywood does stuff like this to excuse their failures when it comes to casting larger roles in bigger movies. For example, giving Mary Queen of Scots a black adviser in a film few will see doesn’t excuse the lack of diverse casting in big budget blockbusters. Where’s the black Batman? Where’s the Asian Ironman? Etcetera.
Back to the movie. Saorise Ronan and Margot Robbie each play their parts well. Ronan is the hotter young babe, while Elizabeth is older. There’s an underlying subtext of youth and beauty vs. age and wisdom. The older you get the wiser you are but alas, you lose your looks and the uglier you get, the worse people treat you even though you’ve lived longer and know more than the younger folk don’t. We are shown scenes where Elizabeth appears in full regal clown makeup (apparently people thought it looked great at the time though I think it made her look like Bozo.) Then, behind the scenes, we see Elizabeth with her hair falling out. She’s getting older. Wrinklier. She contracts chicken pox and spends a good portion of the movie with blisters all over her face.
Indeed, this lets Margot Robbie flex her acting muscles. “Look! I’m more than a pretty face!” However, as an ugly rights advocate, I object. See, Hollywood is so committed to racial diversity that they’ll throw diverse actors into a period piece, but Hollywood is still so discriminatory against the ugly and the old that they won’t let an ugly old woman play Elizabeth. There were probably many fifty year old women losing their hair who would have loved to play Liz but Hollywood was like, “Nope! Slap some ugly makeup on the hot chick! We need the audience to know that it’s all ok. There’s still a hot young babe under all this ugly makeup!”
Black adviser? Sure! Puerto Rican secretary? Why not? 50 year old woman playing a 50 year old woman? GOD, NO! GET HER OUT OF HERE AND SLAP SOME UGLY MAKEUP ON MID 20S HOT MARGOT ROBBIE AT ONCE!!!
STATUS: Borderline shelf-worthy, only because it taught me a few things about that time period I never knew before. Problem is, you have to wade through all the wokeness and turn to the Internet to look up what was fact and what was fiction. I think the film’s best messages get lost amidst a sea of wokeness and the problem is, the messages are woke if you sift through the PC-ness long enough to find them. Ironically, this could have been a great movie.
This review isn’t forged, 3.5 readers. It’s genuine.
Also, the SPOILERS are real.
BQB here with a review of “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
I can’t put my finger on one reason. Instead, for many reasons, as I watched Melissa McCarthy as a middle-aged woman sobbing uncontrollably with a dead cat in her arms, I found myself thinking, almost in Jon Lovitzian fashion, “This is acting!”
But let’s backup. McCarthy plays Lee Israel, a once successful magazine writer and biographer of celebrities. One of her biographies hit the New York Times bestseller list, but when her latest biography flops, her career is done. Over. Finito. She can’t catch a break. Her manager, played by Jane Curtin, more or less informs her that she’s a loser, and her bills are piling up. Her cat is sick and needs expensive treatment. Her rent is overdue. She’s on her way to being homeless.
In an odd twist of fate, while doing research on vaudevillian Fannie Brice, she discovers a real letter written by Fannie herself stuck in one of the library’s books about the old time comedienne. Rather than be honest and tell the library about it, she pockets it. She adds a joke at the end with her own typewriter to up the value and voila, she sells it for just enough cash to help her kitty and keep her landlord at bay.
Alas, once she gets a taste of easy money, she can’t get enough. She falls into the world of celebrity letter collectors and yeah, apparently there is, or was, one. She forges away, writing letters and attributing them to long deceased stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. She makes her way from book store to book store and other collector shops, selling them for profit.
Her partner in crime is Jack Hock, an unapologetically flamboyant homosexual raconteur. Once an aspiring writer who hobnobbed in the same stodgy Mahattan writer party scene as Lee, they get reacquainted over a chance meeting in a bar. Turns out, they’re both washed up has-beens who can’t even get invited to the parties they didn’t even like going to in the first place.
At this point, you might want to know why I think Melissa McCarthy deserves to win best actress for blubbering over that dead kitty. Let me get there.
This movie isn’t just about the world of counterfeit memorabilia and the forgers who make dough off it. It’s more than that.
It’s about loneliness. Sadness. Aging. Desperation. It’s about how when you’re young, you have a dream, and then one day, you wake up and you realize you didn’t achieve it, you never will, it’s too late to keep trying. You try your best to give in to this new, sad chapter of life where you go from hoping “IT” will happen, whatever it is to you, and trying to accept it won’t happen.
And yet, that little voice in your head keeps telling you to try. So you keep trying, even though to the world, you look like a loser. Because you’re old and didn’t you get the memo? Old people aren’t supposed to do great things. If they were going to do it, they would have done it already.
Long story short, that kitty was Lee’s BFF. Lee had a prickly personality and had to accept her failure wasn’t just the world being unkind to another writer but also, because she was a drunk who insulted people who were trying to help her, making them less likely to help in the future.
She just didn’t like people. And they didn’t like her. So when that cat croaks, it’s like how a spouse might feel upon the death of a husband or wife, or any family member on the death of another in the family. The cat accepted her and she accepted the cat.
The hottest actresses in Hollywood could never pull off this scene. I don’t care how much ugly makeup you slap on, say, Margot Robbie. You’d know it is still Margot under there. You know Margot will never have to worry about having to keep a cat alive just to prevent herself from being alone. You know Margot could score twenty dicks in thirty seconds just by asking for them if she were so inclined.
Melissa McCarthy isn’t ugly, per se. She’s like the rest of us, average. In fact, she’s uglied up for this film, given messy hair, extra wrinkles, etc. She’s convincing as a person who dreamed big. Thought she’d be a great, wealthy, respected writer. And her plan didn’t work out. And so, now she’s old. And alone. Watching TV with her cat. Regretting breaking up with her long gone lesbian lover. She knows her life will never be what she wanted it to be. She’s bitter over the unlucky breaks the world sends her. And so, the cat is the tipping point. The last middle finger the world has given her and she can’t take it anymore. She’s tired of never getting what she wants out of life and the fact that God can’t even let her keep her kitty makes her snap into a blubbering mess.
Bonus points for Richard E. Gant. If you’re a nerd, you’ve seen him in a lot of nerdy stuff. Dr. Who. Game of Thrones. Logan. He’s one of those actors you’ve seen in so many things. You’re like, “I know that guy, he was in…” whenever you see him in a movie. This role finally gives him the reward of becoming the guy whose name you know.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Bonus points for the message that when your life is in the dumper, no one can pull you out of the trash but you. Somehow, you have to keep going in spite of the odds against you. Obviously, (spoiler) the success isn’t in the forgery but in pulling herself together when she is caught.
We’ve all had that moment where we break down and cry as we realize life is going to be a dick and not deal us the cards we need to make the life we want possible. Maybe we weren’t holding a dead kitty when he had that nervous breakdown, but we’ve all freaked when we realize we must accept that what we want and what life will allow us to have are two very different things.
As you know, I have long been an advocate for ugly rights and this year, I have no doubt that ugly actors will be snubbed yet again.
But moving on, my thoughts on Best Picture:
THE NOMINEES:
Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star is Born
Vice
WHAT I DID NOT SEE:
I didn’t see The Favourite, Green Book, Roma, Vice.
Vice, to me, seems like just one big long early 2000’s era SNL sketch about a presidential administration that is long forgotten. Doesn’t seem like it should be but time moves fast. So, I’m not sure it is Oscar worthy but again, I didn’t see it.
SNUBBED:
Crazy Rich Asians was a rare enjoyable romantic comedy. Asians get so few lead roles in American cinema and on top of that, there was a message about how every young adult has to choose between making his/her family happy and making him/herself happy that is universal around the world.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? I actually just saw this tonight and I didn’t expect it to, but it really moved me. There is just something about Melissa McCarthy as a lonely old woman balling her eyes out over the death of her cat, quite literally her only friend in the world, that provides a look into the depths of loneliness and sadness that grips many people. It’s something that a million hottie actress could never convey, no matter how much you ugly them up.
A Quiet Place – I might be alone here but I feel like this could have gotten some love. It achieved a lot with very little. It told a whole story with only a handful of words ever spoken.
Chappaquiddick – A powerful case study on how there is one set of laws for the rich and powerful and another set for the rest of us schlubs. But, you know, Kennedy was loved by Hollywood so, on and on the vicious cycle goes.
WHO WILL WIN? (And What Did I See?)
Black Panther was a good superhero movie. It’s watchable again and again and when I went, there were so many black people in attendance in traditional African garb that I figured there was no way the Oscars could ignore it. They’ll never give an Oscar to a super hero movie (though if the Avengers series ever finally ends, they should consider giving that last movie an Oscar as they did with Lord of the Rings, another comic booky type of movie series, just to celebrate the achievement of finishing a series that lasted so long.)
Bohemian Rhapsody was touching and a good story about a) doing what you love b) being loyal to those who help you do it c) choosing one love over lots of meaningless sex will, surprise, surprise, make you happier. D) Confidence will get you places.
But it won’t win because alas, the original director has some perv allegations. I actually agree with that. We can’t reward alleged pervs.
A STAR IS BORN – It’s long, too long. And sad. Yet, at the same time, it was hard for me to feel sorry for Lady Gaga or Bradley Cooper. They are both just too beautiful. It did have some important messages about keeping your jealousy in check in a relationship and also, as you age, you’ll have to learn to accept that you’ll never be as fabulous as you were in your prime.
PREDICTION: BlacKkKlansman will win. It was a good movie. It tackled a serious subject with, surprisingly, a lot of humor. It’s one of Spike Lee’s best. I think the Academy will pick it not necessarily because of the movie itself but because it is critical of Bad Orange Man and in case you haven’t noticed, Awards shows like to dump on him.
BQB here with a review of Liam Neeson’s last semi-watchable film, Cold Pursuit.
It’s unfortunate that the man with the particular set of skills decided to whip out a proverbial revolver and shoot himself directly in the foot before this film, because it would have been better for Liam Neeson to have gone out on a high note. I don’t what he was thinking when he publicly declared to the press that back in the day, he walked around looking to beat up any black man when one black man raped his friend but oh well, thanks for the honesty, Liam, now go sit in the corner with Mel Gibson.
Hollywood loves something that works and will try to milk it forever if they can. Earlier this decade, Neeson, known mostly for historical dramas, wowed us in Taken, being the ex-CIA spy who uses his skills to rescue his kidnapped daughter. It was something new, the beginning of a, “Uh oh, those idiots messed with the wrong guy” type of action genre that Neeson excelled at. Mild mannered men who would gladly kick back and let dust grow on them until they are wronged…and then they kick ass and take names.
The trailer of this film promises us just that. Here, Neeson plays Nels Coxman (the connotation made fun of throughout the film), a mild mannered snow plow driver who, to our great delight, owns a vast array of heavy, dangerous snow removal equipment which can easily double as bad guy murdering devices, chief among them his enormous truck with an equally large plow. When Neeson is shown using said truck to knock a car off the road with the ease one might flip an unwanted veggie off of one’s plate, I was sold.
Now I want a refund. The first twenty minutes start off as you might expect. Nels has the kind of life most good men yearn for. Loving wife (Laura Dern), a son, a business, respect of his community. Alas, when the young lad is iced by a Denver, Colorado drug running syndicate, it all goes to shit. Nels trades in his polite ways and starts murdering his way up the gang’s food chain, picking off baddies one by one, longing to eventually get to the big boss and take out the operation for good.
Had that line been pursued, the movie would have gone down as a fun thrill ride. Alas, like Bugs Bunny, it takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Many wrong turns, in fact.
A comedy of errors ensues and to the film’s credit, there’s a very dark, unsettling, just below the surface version of dark humor. The gang’s leader, Viking (Tom Bateman, who has a future as a breakout star and go to guy if Hollywood ever needs someone to play a pretentious douchebag as he does it so well here) assumes that a rival Native American gang has broken a long truce and both sides go to war. Tom Jackson provides Viking’s nemesis as the stoic White Bull, who with actions instead of words, shows us he’s a bit mixed up. During a trip to a typical, overdone, luxury ski resort, White Bull one second seems pleased by the atmosphere then remembers this was once his peoples’ land for as far as the eye could see and screams.
The rival factions go to war and Liam is forgotten for long periods of time. A running gag in the form of “In Memoriam” cards ties the film together. Every time a baddie is rubbed out, his name runs solemnly across the screen. Most of the times you see the murder. Occasionally, you’re not sure what the prospective killer is about to do with the prospective victim in his midst until you see the victim’s name appear.
It’s an ensemble cast, featuring some fairly big names, as well as a number of actors you know you’ve seen in many other films but can’t quite place their name. William Forsythe, for example, was the king of playing back-up, douchey/tough guy henchmen and or cops in 1980s action flicks. Ergo, it is somewhat fitting that he plays Nels’ brother here…as well as a long retired drug dealer whose name Nels had all but forgotten. If there’s one good part of the flick, it gives Forsythe a long awaited chance to shine and for a brief minute, step outside of the lead’s shadow.
There are a lot subplots and characters that go nowhere, as if the film were a pot and someone, somewhere said, “I like candy sprinkles! Let’s throw that into the stew! Wait, I love cucumbers! Let’s put that in and pig’s feet? You can’t go wrong with those! Hey, here’s a leftover pizza slice from last week! Gotta have it!”
For example, Emmy Rossum and John Doman play a old cop teaching young cop combo. In Nels’ hometown of Kehoe, Emmy as Kim Dash, wants to crack the string of murders case wide open. John Gipsky, the older veteran advises to leave things be. As long as the gangsters aren’t targeting civilians, let them murder each other while small town life continues. You wait, and wait, and wait for some moment when against her older partner’s wishes, Dash manages to get the duo caught up in the middle of the shitstorm but it never, ever happens. Oh, spoiler alert.
Same thing with Domenick Lombardozzi, the bald headed Italian tough guy who wowed us in The Wire, wasn’t so bad in the latest season of Frank Donovan and has a strange way of making audiences feel like he could equally give them a hug like a big old teddy bear and also smash their faces with a tire iron. He play’s Viking’s top henchman, Mustang. He seems to be bonding with the boss’s son and there’s an inkling that he thinks the boy deserves a better life than the one the crime boss can provide. Then you learn that Mustang is gay and he and his lover, another henchman, are keeping their love quiet from the boss. You wait and wait and wait for the scene where Mustang and his love take the boy, adopt him and run off into the sunset but, well keep waiting.
I could go on. There’s so much build up in all of the characters and so much, nothing. Ultimately, the movie is like the hodge podge plate you might take away from a pot luck dinner. You’ve got a piece of lasagna, some asparagus, a piece of meatloaf, a deli sandwich, some jello, a glob of tuna noodle casserole and three potato chips. All good stuff, but rather pointless together, and in such small bites, not one of them alone can make you happy, and all of them mixed together just makes you sad.
STATUS: Moderately shelf-worthy…only for cool snow removal equipment murder scenes. Also, the scenic views of the Rocky Mountains, which seem like living in the Hoth like weather would be worth it.
Grab your glasnost, 3.5 comrades. It’s time for some perestroika.
BQB here with a review of the comedic farce, The Death of Stalin.
At the outset, you wouldn’t a movie about the death of one of the most prolific mass murderers in history would be the stuff of comedy gold. Ironically, you’d be wrong. As the film takes you by the hand and introduces you to the ultra-paranoid society of 1950s Russia, you immediately find a time when the tiniest slip-up, be it a poorly chosen word, an unavoidable mistake or even the wrong look on your face can land you and your family imprisoned in a gulag if you’re lucky, or lined up against a wall and shot if you’re not.
I know. It still doesn’t sound funny, does it? Well, there is plenty of horror mixed in, but the humor comes from the political wrangling of Stalin’s boot licking lackeys in the wake of their fearless leader’s demise. All sat idly by and supported the executions of millions of their countrymen, but now, they’re so desperate to save their own skins that they’ll say or do anything, literally anything…no matter how foolish it makes them look, or how obviously contrary to the obvious truth it may be.
Early on in the film, we’re given a primer on life for the average Russian under Stalin. A symphony’s performance concludes, and musicians and audience members alike begin to retire for the evening. Suddenly, a technician for the local radio station covering the event receives a telephone call. Stalin himself wants a copy of the recording of the performance to listen to.
Problem? There isn’t one. The performance was just broadcast live. In any other world, the tech’s head wouldn’t be in danger. He’d simply apologize and promise to do better, making a note to be sure to record all future performances.
But failure isn’t an option here. Ergo, the technician, fearful for his own life, turns from mild-mannered man to furious beast, locking the symphony hall doors and barking orders at audience members and musicians alike, demanding they all return to their places and do it again.
Once the situation is explained to all in attendance, they comply. Impoverished peasants are brought in to replace audience members who already left. You wouldn’t think fewer audience members would be a big deal but the tech sweats every last detail, fearful that fewer bodies will throw the acoustics off. Meanwhile, the conductor has already left, so an alternate maestro is rousted out of bed and left to conduct the re-do in his bath robe.
Ultimately, hundreds of people all come together to remake the evening’s performance, all fearful that a refusal to play their part will learn to their imminent deaths.
This is life under Stalin. It isn’t just a matter of shut your mouth and tow the Communist Party line, although even that to someone from a free society would seem unbearable. No, it’s worse than that. Stalin’s grip is so ironclad that the slightest, most unintended offense is enough to bring about your doom.
When Stalin falls terminally ill, the race is on for his inner circle of toadies and yes men to save their hides as well as their political careers. They must walk a delicate tight rope in which they outdo each other in being the loudest to proclaim their love of Stalin, all the while trying to implement reforms that will keep the people from revolting amidst a power vacuum. If you’re impressed by the reforms, don’t be. People will still be imprisoned and shot, just fewer and not as at random.
Ultimately, it’s a battle royale between Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale) the head of the Russian Secret Police and the man who carries out Stalin’s executions and Communist party secretary Nikita Khruschev (Steve Buscemi.)
Beria is a sadist, a cold and calculating killer whose psychopathic ways are fully sanctioned by the state, giving him an air of heroism when at any time he’d probably be more suited for a straight jacket in a mental hospital. On a regular basis, he delivers lists of people who Stalin wants killed to his forces, including intricate orders of how these so-called enemies are to die. When you hear, “Shoot her first but make sure he sees it,” you, the viewer, realize you’re not watching a government at work but rather, a glorified Mafia organization.
Beria’s resume is so gruesome that you wonder why you haven’t heard of him. On top of the murders, he’s also a serial rapist. He openly boasts of the scores of wives who have sex with him in the hopes that doing so will get their husbands released from prison. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. On top of that, he’s a pedophile, ordering his men to scoop up young girls to be used as his playthings.
He is a schemer and his struggle for power is humorous. His idea of reform is to strike Stalin’s kill lists and replace them with kill lists of his own.
Meanwhile, Buscemi plays Khruschev like a washed up old stand up comic. Each evening, Nikita goes home and dictates the day’s doings to his wife, who writes down every joke and comment he made to Stalin, along with Stalin’s reaction. In the morning, his wife reads back the list, and Nikita commits to memory the topics that got a positive reaction and a negative one, thus reinforcing to the secretary what he needs to say and not say in order to keep his head on his shoulders another day.
As Beria and Nikita try to one up each other, they each vye for the hearts and minds of Stalin’s crew of degenerates. These include Jeffrey Tambor as Malenkov, Stalin’s heir apparent who obviously isn’t suited for the job. Tambor plays the part as a nervous man with a perpetually unsettled stomach, one who is weak and indecisive, changing his mind regularly on which man he’ll support based on who is currently pulling ahead in the battle of wits.
Molotov, another henchman, becomes a crucial power player. Stalin’s death allows Beria to save him from a kill list but Nikita lobbies him extensively. Despite having been placed on a kill list, Molotov still speaks highly of Stalin and even openly curses his beloved yet long imprisoned wife as a traitor, not because he believes any of this but because he wants to stay alive.
In the end, you find yourself rooting for Nikita as the least shitty apple in a bunch of truly shitty apples. My main criticism is that as shitty as Beria is, you might lose sight amidst the hi-jinx that Nikita and company all stood by and were happy to let him do his evil deeds as long as it suited them, only to then distance themselves from the madness when it equally suited them.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. If you watch it and still think socialism is a good idea, get your head examined.
I’ve got to stop seeing movies in January, 3.5 readers. I really do.
BQB here with a review of Glass.
It’s funny how things come around full circle. Nineteen years ago, I saw M. Knight Shyamalan’s Unbreakable and thought it was a ridiculous pile of crap. Nearly two decades later, the literally waited for by no one sequel is equally crappy.
Hollywood types have got to start asking themselves a key question – just because they CAN make a movie, does it mean they should? No, I get the free speech argument. I’m not telling them to not make a shitty movie if that is their desire. I also get that shit is in the eye of the beholder. Overall though, I just wonder if there is limited time and money to make a movie, then maybe a movie maker should make a good movie rather than a shitty one. Worse, maybe take a risk on a movie with a good idea but no history rather than slap together a pile of crap because it has characters who were in the pile of crap years ago and now making endless sequels to everything, no matter how crappy, is the vogue thing to do.
Poor. M. Knight. I’m really going to take a dump on this movie. But the twist is that I’m going to pee on it too.
Ironically, 2016’s Split was good…and also a January movie. I wrote on this fine blog that perhaps it was the start of a Shyamalanassaince. It was a decent, scary part-horror/part-thriller/part-mystery about a shrink working with the so-called good personalities of a schizophrenic to defeat an incoming monstrous personality.
Top notch, Knight. Shoulda stopped there. Take the win. Move on.
Alas, Knight (because I refuse to write Shama…malamalama…whatever…a hundred more times) doubled down. He decided to pit James McAvoy’s “Split” character against the Bruce Willis character, with evil assistance from the Samuel L. Jackson character, both from Unbreakable.
Though in the ending of Split, it looked like a movie in which Willis’ indestructible vigilante, David Dunn, hunts “The Beast” i.e. the worst of “The Horde” or the collective name for all of McAvoy’s character’s personalities, it turns out to have been a shitty idea.
There’s little hunt to be had. Instead, Dunn, Horde and Glass find themselves in the same looney bin. A shrink (Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellie Staple) arrives on the scene, claiming to be the world’s foremost expert on convincing screwballs to stop believing they are comic book super heroes…because apparently, that’s a real, legit thing that people study…that or no one in Hollywood wants to tell Knight no.
Dr. Staple subjects the trio to all manner of experiments, drilling it into them that their so-called powers are not real but rather, anything extraordinary they have done is just pure coincidence. The Beast isn’t really strong. He just managed to push away some jail bars that were rotting. David isn’t really indestructible. He has just been really lucky in avoiding death thus far. And Mr. Glass may be smart, but so are other people, and his gift really just lies in talking chumps into thinking he’s a genius.
There are way too many logical leaps you have to take. With three highly infamous nutjobs all under one roof, the mental hospital has ridiculously lax security. Allusions are made to a showdown at a new, state of the art tower but the trio never get past a show down in the nut house parking lot.
Overall, it’s dumb. Just plain dumb. It’s cool that Spence Treat Clarke, Dunn’s son from the first film, is back and all grown up as his father’s assistant in vigilante crime fighting. In fact, the first twenty minutes of the film make it look like a real treat – that Willis is going to track this psycho through the streets of Philly with the help of his son. Alas, it just gets dumb after that. Pure dumbness.
STATUS: Not shelf-worthy. Seeing this and Serenity in the same weekend just makes me weep for Hollywood’s future. I feel like Knight shot himself in the foot here, because Split was good, but rather than just take the win and think of a whole new idea, he did the old “Let me take a part of a movie that people liked and put it with a part of a movie that people might remember and serve it up like a three bean casserole and hey, it has a bit of recognizability so maybe people will see it.” Ugh. Please don’t see it. Stop encouraging Knight. I know he’s got talent. He just has to stop chasing that twist dragon. He got on it with The Sixth Sense and then he never let it go. He thinks he’s going to outdo his past twists and he never will. Knight, really, it’s ok. You can make a story that does not have a twist. In fact, a movie from you without a twist? That would be the greatest twist of all.
Bookshelf Battle 